Media devices, such as a set top box, a stereo, a television, a computer system, a game system, or the like, are often configured to receive and/or present various types of media content to a user. The media content may be received from a content service provider that is broadcasting the same media content to many media devices. The broadcast media content is typically provided to the receiving media devices via a content distribution system, wherein all of the media devices receive and/or have access to the same broadcasting media content. Non-limiting examples of such content distribution systems include satellite systems, cable system, and the Internet.
Typically, media content is theme based. Examples of such theme-based media content includes movies, films, serial programming, sporting events, documentaries, newscasts, religious programs, informative programs (typically of longer duration than a commercial having advertising content), or the like. Serial programming may present a continuing plot and/or theme, often with the same cast of actors, in a sequential episode-by-episode basis that is available periodically.
In many situations, advertising content (interchangeably referred to herein as an advertisement, a commercial, or the like) may be interspersed through a presented thematic media content event. As the user is viewing the presented thematic media content event on their media presentation device or their media device, from time to time, presentation of the thematic media content event is paused for a short duration (interchangeably referred to herein as a commercial break) so that the one or more advertisements are presented to the user. Typically, the advertisements are of a relatively short duration, such as a few seconds or a few minutes. After a conclusion of the presentation of the one or more advertisements during the commercial break, presentation of the thematic media content event resumes.
Advertising content is typically produced by a third party organization, such as an advertising agency, a product manufacturer, a product distributor, a charitable organization, or the like. Each target asset includes advertisement content or the like. Often, the advertisement is intended to influence a viewer to purchase a product, purchase a service, or perform some other act related to the advertisement subject matter.
The produced advertisement is provided to the content service provider prior to the intended time of presentation to the user. The content service provider then generates a stream of media content that includes the thematic media content interspersed with the advertisements inserted into the commercial breaks, which is then broadcast to the receiving media devices. Often, the third party (or another party paying for the production of the commercial) pays the content service provider for the insertion of their advertisements into the commercial breaks of one or more particular thematic media content events.
Recent advances in technology have resulted in new ways to selectively present particular advertisements to targeted (identified) users who are receiving a broadcast of a particular thematic media content event. One newly available technique of presenting advertising content to users who are viewing a particular broadcasted thematic media content event is to select a particular advertisement that is expected to be of a higher interest to the targeted viewing user.
Selection of a particular advertisement is based upon a matching of attributes of the advertisement with attributes of the targeted viewing user (interchangeably referred to herein as an asset attribute or an advertisement attribute). When a commercial break occurs during presentation of a thematic media content event, a particular advertisement targeted to a particular viewing user is then presented during the commercial break. Accordingly, different users who are viewing the same thematic content event can be presented different selected advertisements.
In such targeted advertisement systems, each individual advertisement is identifiable by a unique identifier such that an individual advertisement can be locally stored into a memory medium of the media device, and then later retrieved from the memory medium for presentation to the user. In an example targeted advertisement system, many different advertisements (along with their unique identifier) are communicated to the media device and then stored in a memory medium of the media device prior to the intended time of presentation to the user.
A listing of attributes associated with each particular advertisement may also be included with each stored advertisement. The advertisement attributes describe characteristics about the advertisement and/or about a user of interest that would be intended to be a viewer of that advertisement when presented during a commercial break.
Attributes pertaining to a particular user(s) of a media device may also be stored at the media device. User attributes describe one or more characteristic that describe and/or may be associated with that particular user, the user's location and/or account, the user's household, or other users residing at the household. User attributes may be defined remotely and then downloaded to and stored at the media device. Alternatively, or additionally, user attributes may be defined at the media device based on past user activities. For example, the media device may have a learning algorithm or the like is used to monitor user activities, and then define one or more user attributes (preferences, habits, etc.) based on the user's activities.
At some point in time prior to a commercial break, the targeted advertisement system selects particular targeted advertisements for presentation to particular viewing users based on a match between advertisement attributes and user attributes. The targeted advertisement system typically resides at the media device, but may reside remotely in some applications. Presumably, the third party who produced the targeted advertisement(s) has paid a service fee or the like to the content service provider to have their particular targeted advertisement(s) be considered as candidate targeted advertisements that are eligible for selection and presentation during a commercial break.
For example, a hypothetical automobile manufacturer may have produced an advertisement for a sports car, an advertisement for a family van, and an advertisement for a truck. The automobile manufacturer, upon payment or a fee to the content service provider, may have a scheduled block of time during a particular commercial break wherein one of their three example targeted advertisements will be presented to all viewing users. A first user may be a young professional with a relatively large amount of disposable income (user attributes: young, professional, disposable income). The sports car may have associated attributes of being desirable to younger affluent people (advertisement attributes: young buyers, high income). A second user may be a head of a family household with a moderate large amount of disposable income and several young children (user attributes: children, moderate income). The family van may have associated attributes of being desirable to families (advertisement attributes: parents with children). Finally, a third user may be a tradesman operating their own service business (user attributes: tradesman, service business). The truck may have associated attributes of being desirable to a tradesman (advertisement attributes: reliable service vehicle and utility vehicle). Thus, when all three users are viewing the same thematic media content event, and when the commercial break occurs, the first user will be presented the sports car advertisement, the second user will be presented the family van advertisement, and the tradesman will be presented the truck advertisement.
To support a targeted advertisement system, a large number of selectable targeted advertisements (interchangeably referred to herein as a targeted asset) are communicated to and saved into the many media devices that are receiving thematic media content from the content service provider. The large number of targeted advertisements must be communicated to and saved into the media devices in advance of the commercial breaks in which any particular targeted advertisement will be selected and then presented.
In a legacy targeted advertisement system, received targeted advertisements are received by the content service provider from various third party producers of the targeted advertisements. Received targeted advertisements are packaged into a group of assets, interchangeably referred to herein as a file, for broadcast or transmission to the receiving media devices. Each file may be packaged as a zip file to reduce the amount of transmission data. Typically, each zip file may include both a number of assets, for example one hundred or so assets as well as metadata identifying criteria and/or attributes for each of the assets contained in the asset file. Any number of such asset files may then be broadcast, typically in a serial fashion, for reception by the media devices that receive media content via the distribution network.
Each receiving media device receives every one of the zip files and stores them in its resident memory medium. As the plurality of assets are in a zipped or reduced storage format, the media devices are capable of storing many such zip files. The media devices then unzip each received zip file, and then store the much larger volume of individual targeted advertisements. Accordingly, the media device may have to save hundreds or even thousands of assets (targeted advertisements).
The media devices may then analyze the targeting criteria (advertisement attributes) of each targeted advertisement, and compare the targeted advertisement attributes to the stored user attributes. Such user attributes may include data about the media device including the specific geographic region in which the media device is located, demographic data of the household of the user in possession of the media device, viewing habits of the user's household, and/or personal characteristics of the user. In some embodiments, for targeted advertisement assets for which the stored targeted advertisement attributes matches the user attributes, the media device may maintain the stored matching assets, and then delete the other assets for which the targeted advertisement attributes do not match the particular user attributes for that media device. Accordingly, deletion of non-matching targeted advertisements may then free enough memory to open or unzip the next file of targeted advertisement assets. The process may be repeated until every targeted advertisement file has been analyzed and all applicable targeted advertisements have been stored.
Issues with such legacy targeted advertisement systems include requiring a very large number of read/write operations to be performed by the individual media devices. Then, each media device must store and review every targeted advertisement asset residing in the zip files that are distributed to it over the system. Distribution of the zip files with targeted advertisement assets typically occurs on a daily basis. Accordingly, the content service provider mast generate a large number of zip files with the targeted advertisement assets, and then communicate the large number of zip files to all of the media devices, thereby utilizing a large amount of computing bandwidth and a large amount of communication system bandwidth and/or capacity.
Additionally, the available memory capacity of the individual media devices is limited. Accordingly, a limited number of zip files may be stored/analyzed before the full utilization of the allocated memory capacity needed to unzip the file, store the unzipped targeted advertisement assets, as well as to store the other targeted advertisement assets and/or media content itself. In many such targeted advertisement systems, although thousands of targeted advertisement assets are distributed daily by the content service provider, only a hundred or so targeted advertisement assets may be applicable to any individual media device because the advertisement attributes of a limited number of distributed targeted advertisement assets match the user attributes associated with that particular media device. Accordingly, such legacy systems are both inefficient in the excessive read/write operations performed by the content service provider and the receiving media devices, as well as the large amount of transmission bandwidth and transmission capacity required to communicate the zipped files to the media devices over the communication system.
Accordingly, there is a need in the arts to reduce the daily number of read/write operations performed by the content service provider and the receiving media devices, as well as reduce the large amount of transmission bandwidth and transmission capacity required to communicate the large numbers of zip files to the media devices over the communication system.